Haydn as Henry
The starting point for the painting ‘Haydn as Henry’ is the subject’s love of films. This portrait took as its starting point an opening scene from the movie ’Goodfellas’, reflecting the subject’s love of film, The Henry of the title is Henry Hill, the character played by Ray Liotta in the film.
It needed to be a portrait that this particular teenage boy (my nephew) would feel comfortable with and the chosen scene was his suggestion. We set about recreating the scene and then adapted it to make a painting that was balanced in composition, incorporating elements that were present from the sittings and eliminating others that were superfluous to the atmosphere we were after.
On exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in the BP Portrait Awards from 23rd June 2016.
